Gran Canaria Airport — Local services in Ingenio

I recently travelled to Gran Canaria with my young family of 4, we have a 3 year old and a 12 week old. We had a lovely holiday, until the horror or trying to get home. We were at the airport 2 hours before our flight as check in only opens 2 hours prior. We checked our bags in no problem, security was quick. Then the horror of trying to get to our gate…

We walked straight through duty free, to be greeted with mega queues, which had no sign so it wasn’t clear which queue we needed to join. It was only until an assistant was shouting for families to join either one of two queues. So we joined a queue straight away. This queue took 1 hour and 45 minutes for us to get to the front to realise there was only one person checking passports for hundreds of people to get to their gate. This was not explained prior, neither was the fact that the queues are 1 hour 45 minute waits. It’s lucky we didn’t stop for food or to browse duty free. This allowed us a maximum of 15 minutes to walk from bag drop to the actual plane, so having to go to the toilet wasn’t an option. We would ask the assistant for help, making her aware our flight was fast approaching but no one seemed to care. Everyone was in the same position queuing with only minutes until their flight took off.

During our wait in the queue, multiple people tried to queue jump due to poor organisation and management. We would tell them there’s a queue and direct them to the back. One person took great offence to us not letting him queue jump, and started hurling abuse at my family (husband, 3 year old and 12 week old). No assistant or security around to help, he eventually left us alone after spitting at my husband. He then tried to skip the other queue. Again, he was told to join the back of the queue by the holidaymakers, eventually the assistant came where he also hurled abuse at her. She finally got security. After 10 minutes of arguing with security they let him jump the queue and go through passport control. This was disgusting, there’s no doubt he should have been escorted away from the airport, not allowed to skip queues. A lot of people were affected by his aggressive behaviour, especially young children.

This is by far the worst experience I’ve ever had at an airport, we will never return to Gran Canaria with kids because of this. It wasn’t so bad for 18+ as they were able to use the digital passport control, but they wouldn’t let anyone under 18 use them.

There is nothing we could have done differently to save time, as it’s so poorly organised the check in needs to open earlier or they need to have more people checking passports as security.

I’ve attached a picture of our queue 15 minutes before our flight was due to take off, final call had been called (baring in mind there’s 1 person checking passports in this queue). We were lucky to have family (18+) over the other side of the gate to make them aware of the chaos.

I’m not usually one to write a review but I hope this review saves a family the experience we had. One star is...

On 24.12.23 around 9:20-10:00 I was treated horribly by airport workers that stand before security checkpoint next to automatic gates with boarding pass recognition (not by security personel they were quick and proffesional).

I had an injury in my foot and had pain with every step so I saw opportunity to skip 50m of walking around in artificial labirynt created with plastic straps. It is a standard practice on every airport I have visited beforheand to let less mobile people skip unnessesery labirynt and let them go directly to security. There were just couple people in line at the time, and I did not pass them because every one was walking faster than me to metal detector anyway. I did not mind waiting in line becouse I had still over 2h to my flight, but I was trying to spare myself unnessesery pain..

Two rude workers high on power trip (two man in their 20') , one short skinny with comical bowlcut bangs, other one morbidly obese with neck beard and glasses) harassed me and pushed me to walk whole labirynt again despite the fact that I was allready close to trays next to security chekpoint, and there was absolutely no reason to turn me around.

I was trying to explain my situation, but the FAT and vulgar one with stinking breath (he was this close to my face), pushed me to do it anyway. He was agressive with his body language. He was almost shouting that he does not speak eanglish (realy bizzare for worker of international airport, if true, I suspect obese guy was just trying to be problematic) Just so he can be mean and push people around, simply for the pleasure of exercising control. Something he lacks in his dietary chioces.. He is an obese, frustrated and agressive "person" stuck in an job he has no business doing.

I have visited close to 30 countries in my life and took close to 80 flights. This is the first time here in Gran Canaria airport something like that happened to me. In my experience, airport workers around the world are usually nice and respectfull, they may not always smile but they ramain proffesional and eagar to help.

This is NOT the case in Aena airport. I hope that this review results in some personel changes and additional training for others. Please replace them with some more mature personel with some empathy. This is not a job for testosteron driven, young uneducated l*sers.

Turism is really big part of G.C economy, please do not sabotage it with wrong...

Probably a great airport if you are not British. Last year visited Tenerife for the first time and got the distinct impression that we Brits were not popular from security and immigration by the way myself and other Brits around me were treated when compared with EU visitors, but I thought I must be tired and imagining things. This year for my 50th in December we went to Las Palmas, (great city by the way!) and experienced similar but worse at this airport. We all know the passport queues are now EU and non EU labelled in all airports, but every other country I visit regularly, Croatia, Malta, and Italy for example just want to clear the queues and don't care what queue is used, and actively encourage Brits to go through the EU queue to keep the airport moving. What we experienced recently in Gran Canaria made me feel like buying a T-shirt emblazoned with "I didn't vote to leave don't blame me" The staff made the Brits queue to the side of the auto passport line of machines, the queue kept building until to wound its way back to the exit, and all the time the staff are shouting EU and Ireland passports only, this went on for about 20 mins, eventually they run out of EU passport holders and for several more minutes they kept us queuing, still shouting in the hope they could find more people to go first, until we stood for several minutes without anyone using the machines, a few defiant Brits attempted to go through and were shouted back into the queue which was now was in the hundreds. When they were satisfied there was likely no more EU residents in the whole airport, they shouted for the first 12 people to line up in front of the machine, we naturally went to move forward and use it and we got shouted at again to step back. Several more minutes past with us standing in compliant silence staring at a machine we were not allowed to access. The woman standing to my left commented it was like being arrested. Eventually we were allowed to pass through and then to the next queue to get out passports stamped. You could argue this treatment is linked to the much reported distain for over tourism but it was only aimed at Brits so to many of us quietly complying with authority it felt like punishment for Brexit. Believe me Gran Canaria, many of us wanted to keep free movement but don't worry we won't be coming back (hooray I...